Arab, Yemeni

The Southern Yemeni Arabs are the Arabic-speaking Sunni Muslims of Yemen's southern highlands and coast, from the green terraced mountains of Ibb and Taiz to the port of Aden and the tribal hinterland of Lahij, al-Dhale and Abyan. Unlike the Zaydi Shia highlanders of the north, they follow the Shafi'i school of Sunni Islam, with an old Sufi heritage centred on the saints' tombs around Taiz. Their dialect, Ta'izzi-Adeni Arabic, carries English and Indian words from more than a century of British rule in Aden, and Taiz prides itself as Yemen's cultural capital, home of its teachers, writers and great merchant families. Split between the Houthi-held north and the government and southern separatist camp in Aden, they have borne some of the war's heaviest fighting, with Taiz city besieged since 2015 and tens of thousands displaced again in 2026.

Yemenis have studied and sought medical care in Cairo since the 1960s, when Egyptian troops fought for the republic in Yemen's civil war, and the war that began in 2015 turned many patients, students and their families into long-term residents. About 100,000 Yemenis live in Egypt, most of them on Cairo's west bank in Giza's Dokki, Mohandessin and Faisal districts, where Yemeni restaurants serve mandi and mathbahi and shop signs carry Yemeni names. They come from every part of Yemen, from Aden and Taiz to the northern highlands and Hadramawt, and are mostly Sunni Muslims of the Shafi'i school, with a Zaydi minority from the north. Wealthier families have bought flats and invested in property and food businesses, while poorer ones struggle to renew residence permits, and the closure of the Yemeni community schools in 2025 sent over 6,000 children looking for places in Egyptian schools.

Yemenis in Jordan are a community of students, businessmen, medical travellers and, since the war began in 2015, asylum seekers, numbering around 20,000 and living mostly in Amman. Many arrived on three-month medical visas and stayed; since Jordan halted refugee registration for non-Syrians in late 2019, newcomers have had no legal status and call themselves 'the unknowns'. The North Amman district of al-Jubeiha, lined with Yemeni restaurants serving mandi and saltah, is the community's centre, while families of mixed Yemeni and Somali descent from Aden live apart in Jabal Amman. People cluster by home province and politics, with students from Hadramawt, labourers from Taiz and Ibb, and northerners who fled Houthi recruitment.

Yemenis in Kuwait are a small, long-settled Arab community of perhaps 10,000 to 15,000, far fewer than before 1990, when tens of thousands of Yemeni workers lived in the country. Iraq's invasion in August 1990 forced some 45,000 Yemenis and their families to flee, and Yemen's refusal to back the war against Iraq kept Kuwait's doors largely closed to them for years. Those who remain are mostly families who have lived in Kuwait for decades, with about as many wives and children as workers, along with shopkeepers, drivers, restaurant owners and professionals. Mandi, rice and meat slow-cooked in a pit oven, is the Yemeni dish now eaten across Kuwait, while the families who brought it worry for relatives living through Yemen's war.

Yemenis in Oman number perhaps 15,000 to 25,000, most of them workers, traders and their families from Hadramawt, al-Mahra and the south of Yemen, for whom Dhofar is the neighbouring province across a 288-kilometre desert border. About 11,000 hold jobs as shopkeepers, drivers, builders, cooks and fishermen, and the free zone at Al Mazyunah on the border, where Yemeni businessmen trade fuel, food and goods bound for eastern Yemen, ties Oman's south to the markets of al-Mahra and Hadramawt. Since the war in Yemen began in 2015, Oman, the only Gulf state outside the Saudi-led coalition, has flown wounded Yemenis to its hospitals, fitted hundreds of amputees with artificial limbs at a centre in Salalah, and let merchants from Mukalla and a few thousand displaced families stay on ordinary residence permits rather than in camps; Muscat is also home to the negotiators of Yemen's Houthi movement. Their Hadrami and southern dialects, Shafi'i Sunni Islam and family ties across the border set them apart from the Omani Arabs of the north.

Yemenis in the Emirates, roughly 90,000 to 100,000 people, are traders, shopkeepers, restaurant workers, drivers, teachers and professionals from Aden, Taiz, Hadramawt and the north, whose mandi rice restaurants are part of everyday Emirati life. Their situation has been shaped since 2015 by the war at home, in which the UAE fought in the south, armed tens of thousands of Yemeni fighters and backed the southern separatist movement, until it withdrew its last troops in January 2026 after a public rift with Saudi Arabia. Southerners who support independence and northerners wary of Abu Dhabi's role live side by side and speak of politics with care. Most are Shafi'i Sunni Muslims, with a Zaydi Shia minority from the northern highlands, and since 2025 the UAE has stopped issuing new work and visit visas to Yemenis, so families rely on the residence permits they already hold.